“A collection of profound and epic album reviews and musical articles by former astronaut and brain surgeon, Alasdair Kennedy. Reaching levels of poetry that rival Keats and Blake, the following reviews affirm Alasdair to be a prodigy, a genius and a god whose opinion is always objectively right. He is also without a doubt the most modest man in the universe.” - Alasdair Kennedy

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Saturday, 28 October 2017

Lo-fi music videos and creepy crawlies feature in this week’s
belated track rundown.

THE BEST:

Everytime’ – Boy Pablo

This frontman has SWAG! Short shorts and a pink hoodie are
my outfit of choice when seducing the ladies. In fact, this whole music video
is a sight to behold – especially the close zooms of the band members’ faces as
they squint into the sun. The Norwegian kids could have won me over with the satirical
goofiness of their video alone, but to top it all off the song itself is bloody
phenomenal. Their dreamy sound is like shoegaze without the sopping wet reverb.
It sounds oddly nostalgic, even if I haven’t heard anything like it before.

‘Time’s Been Reckless’ - Marika Hackman

Marika Hackman’s new upbeat rock single is accompanied by a
music video full of creepy crawlies. Is she getting us in the mood for
Halloween? Are they a visual representation of the decaying love depicted in
the lyrics? Whatever the reason may be, there are bugs in the music video, so
get ready to squirm in your seat.

‘Always a Secret’ – Charlotte & Magon

Ever wondered what a combination of Talking Heads and Kate
Bush would sound like? Probably not. Well, this French-Israeli duo have gone
ahead and created that very concoction. They call it ‘cosmic pop’, which they
describe in their own brilliant terminology as ‘psychedelicious’.

‘Gud Tymes’ – DoM

The pounding drums, spooky church chimes and creepy visuals all
make this an excellent tune for this time of year. The bright synths during the
chorus caught me off guard, but thankfully the track doesn’t go too cheery,
returning back to its menacing verse. I want to call it punk-pop – not to be
confused with pop-punk which is a genre miles apart from this song.

Tuesday, 24 October 2017

WARNING: this is not one of those lists of campy Halloween
classics like Michael Jackson’s Thriller
and Bobby Pickett’s The Monster Mash.
This list is for pure fear-chasing sadists who are ready to surrender their
bowels and suffer endless nightmares for years to come. You’ll want to exorcize
your speakers after listening to these records – not that Satan had any part in
the creation of these albums; in fact, he’s still rocking back and forth in the
corner of his bedroom after listening to these monstrosities, muttering to
himself ‘Why? Why did I scar myself by
reading that terrifying list on Music Related Junk?’. Basically, get off
this list now if you’ve got a weak heart. You have been warned.

5) Nature
Unveiled - Current 93

This 1984 cauldron of Gregorian chanting, pitched-down
pianos and trippy effects-slathered chants still sounds absolutely terrifying to this day.
It’s like playing with a Ouija board on shrooms. The substance of David Tibet’s
incantations is difficult to make out. He could be reading off a shopping list
for most the album for all I know. Not that it matters as the warped delivery would
still be disturbing enough.

Amount of bricks shat: 13

4) Suicide – Suicide

There’s one track on this 1977 album titled ‘Frankie
Teardrop’ which earns Suicide a place
on this list. You can listen to it above if you dare. Vocalist Alan Vega
narrates the twisted story of an overworked man driven to murdering his family,
which would have been creepy enough itself – but then he goes and throws in
some blood-curdling jump-scare shrieks. The whole album’s a little dark, but
this track takes the cake.

Amount of bricks shat: 666

3) Outre - Portal

Portal make every other extreme metal band sound like Disney
music. Outre is their magnum opus
horribilis (basically, it’s truly harrowing shit). You know it’s going to be a
bad trip as soon as those atonal murky guitars come in like some giant Frankenstein
slug made of sewn-together corpses rising out of a swamp. What follows is a
lightless, unforgiving descent through the audial abyss. As you claw onto any sense of hope, the album responds by dragging you deeper into its horrifying depths. Portal claim to be from
Australia, but I think they may have mistaken 'down under' for the ninth circle of Hell.

Amount of bricks shat: ENOUGH TO REBUILD THE PYRAMIDS OF
GIZA

2) Bestial
Burden - Pharmakon

After an emergency operation led her to have an unspecified
organ removed, noise artist Margaret Chardiet (AKA Pharmakon) decided to
release this visceral and utterly fucked-up ode to bodily mutilation. Synth
drones as cold as the chopped up limbs in a psychopath’s freezer and industrial clangs darker and more distorted than a dusty VHS snuff film make up the
backdrop to Margaret’s vocals, which are a mixture of tortured screams, breathless
gasps and even the sound of her vomiting on one track. You’ll be listening
through one headphone.

Amount of bricks shat: ENOUGH TO BUILD THE GREAT WALL OF
CHINA AND THE TRUMP WALL COMBINED

1) Projekt Misanthropia - Stalaggh

Stalaggh shouldn’t exist, but it does. These bastards took
it too far. ‘Stalaggh’ is a combination of the word ‘stalag’ (a Nazi
concentration camp) and GH (which apparently stands for Global Holocaust). The
vocals are actual screams from mental asylum patients (supposedly). It’s a cesspool
of harsh noise, extreme metal and pained screeches. The same group of musicians
have actually created another project titled Vorkuta under the artist name ‘Gulaggh’, which is arguably worse as
it incorporates children’s screams. I’ve only listened to a couple minutes of
each record and that was enough of an endurance test (you can listen to one of the tracks above as a sweet taster). This is, after all, music to be endured, not enjoyed - if you can even call it 'music'.

Friday, 20 October 2017

Get your jazz hands at the ready. Lots of jazz-inspired fun this week.

THE BEST:

‘Keep the Devil Off’
– Big K.R.I.T

Hallelujah! Praise the lord! The speedy-spitting Mississippi
rapper is back with a track that can only be described as ‘gospel rap’. Over
wild organs, choir harmonies and 808s, K.R.I.T bellows bars with a passion of a
Pentecostal preacher. A new album is set to drop soon, the first since 2014’s Cadillactica.

‘Mosquito’ – Kode Maya

This genre-defying Finnish duo make music that’s both somehow
experimental and poppy, cheery and dark. It’s not often you get a hook like ‘there’s a killer on the loose’ over washed-out
synths that could appear on a Disclosure record. Then, just as you’ve got the
song figured out, it completely changes direction, making way for some jazzy
guitar chords, wacky pitch-shifted vocals and a beat that’s practically hip
hop. It’s a true adventure into the unknown.

‘Butterfly Effect’ –
Abbi Press

This New York singer’s wistful vocals are like spa treatment
to my ears. But it’s the instrumental that sets this apart from everyday lounge
music, starting as chilled electronica and then morphing into some glitched-out
house beat.

‘Candygram’ – Valipala

Valipala dub
themselves a ‘progressive r&b’ act, which is exciting as it sounds. Frontwoman
Lauren Scales delivers belting Whitney-like inflections over an everchanging jazzy
instrumental sporting everything from trumpets to electric guitars. The big
apple band have an EP titled Mango City
out today which is full of equally bananas jazz-pop hybrids ( I got carried
away with the fruit references there) available to listen on their Bandcamp
page here.

THE WORST:

‘It’s Okay To Cry’ –
SOPHIE

SOPHIE’s strength is claustrophobic bangers, not soppy
Europop-style ballads devoid of percussion. Also where are the digital vocals?
Is SOPHIE a real person now? It’s all too human.

‘I Love You Jesus’ –
Trisha Paytas

Youtube’s most annoying vlogger has made a corny Christian
song. Jesus wept.

Friday, 13 October 2017

Dogs in spacesuits, trippy ghost train rides and
nursery-rhyme-style choruses about popping pills. This week has it all…

THE BEST:

‘Sabbathian’ - All
Hail Hyena

All Hail Hyena have been snorting all kinds of substances as
their new video for ‘Sabbathian’ demonstrates, featuring dogs in space-suits
and grinning Buddha statue representations of the band members and all other
manner of off-the-wall shit. It fits the frantic guitarwork and chanted vocals perfectly.
‘Sabbathian’ is straight off the nutters’
brilliant EPS T I C K € R S released earlier this year and has
been entered into a competition held by Salute Music Makers – which you can
check out here.

‘Pills’ – St. Vincent

St. Vincent continues to go full-on pop. The nursery rhyme
style chorus and Taylor Swift vibes at the beginning had me pulling out the
hair in my hipster beard yelling ‘SHE’S GONE MAINSTREAM! NOOOO!’. But wait, it’s
okay – as the track progresses, St. Vincent makes it clear that this is no
ordinary pop song. The instrumental morphs more times than Flubber and the
final two minutes may as well be an entirely different song, evolving into some
epic chamber-pop outro complete with a sax solo.

‘Tic Tac Toe’ –
Django Django

Life can end up being repetitive and dull if you’re not
careful. The latest upbeat twangy anthem from electro-indie cowboys Django Django centres around this theme, complete with a music video that sees the
band taking a trip to the seaside and experiencing all the attractions with a
routine sense of boredom. Are we all just telling ourselves that we’re having
fun, but actually just living life day by day? Is it time to break the cycle?
Should I quit these bloody weekly track roundups and this blog, sell all my
possessions and hitchhike the world? Is that what you’re telling me to do
Django Django? *MUSIC RELATED JUNK IS NOW ON HIATUS*

Shoffy – Fake Friends

With its creative blend of rapping and singing and its woozy
sugary chords, this new chirpy single from LA artist Shoffy will make you truly
believe life can be better without those fake friends in your life. I’m going
to cut ties with all my fake friends today. But wait - what if I don’t have any
friends? WAAAAAAAAAAAAH

THE WORST:

‘And Saints’ – Sleigh
Bells

This song gives me a serious case of blue balls. Those
synths sounded like they were building up to something, but the whole track
just kind of goes nowhere.

‘Straight Boy’ -
Shamir

Before the SJWs come at me, I’m not angry at the subject
matter. Straight men can be douchebags. The issue with this track is that it’s a
wishy-washy two-chord snoozefest that sounds like it was recorded on a phone.
Where are all the groovy dance tracks like ‘On The Regular’? A social message can still carry a groove.

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

Back in the 60s, a folk artist named Bobby Jameson rose to fame. He seemed
set on being the next big pop sensation. However, instead of continuing his course
for stardom, he instead chose to disappear into obscurity. He died in 2015, at
which point indie cult weirdo Ariel Pink decided to create this tribute album.

To be honest, this isn’t really a tribute album at all, at least certainly
not to Jameson's music. Dipping into genres as diverse as 80s synthpop and 70s prog,
most of these sounds are nothing like the folksy tracks that Jameson wrote.
Perhaps what Ariel Pink is really celebrating is Jameson’s defiance to go mainsteam - the fact that he deliberately chose the shadows over the limelight. Pink is a pure-bred outsider – not your average cool-dressing hipster-type like all the other acts paraded on Pitchfork. He’s genuinely weird, and
this album is all about embracing his obscurity, just like Jameson, and refusing
to fit in.

Pom Pom was
arguably Pink’s catchiest record, with singalong anthems like ‘Put Your Number
In My Phone’. He must have felt it was too poppy, because now he’s reined in
the catchy hooks. The production meanwhile is much grainier like some damaged cassette
tape you might find in your parent’s attic. It’s like he’s tried to drill his
sound back into the underground.

That said, for the most part, it also feels less daring than
Pom Pom did. The parping electronica
and radio jingle choruses and risqué lyrics of tracks like ‘Black Ballerina’
and ‘Dinosaur Carebears’ made Pom Pom feel bravely goofy and uncool. On
Dedicated To Bobby Jameson, the sounds are all much cooler – whether he be
borrowing from The Cure or Steely Dan. It’s the stuff we’re used to hearing
indie bands pay tribute to.

Take ‘Feels Like Heaven’ for example. It’s a dazzling reverb-slathered
song with Smiths undertones, but when you listen to your lyrics you realise it’s
your average nostalgic love song. There’s nothing smarmy or pitiful or creepy
about, which has always been Ariel Pink’s shtick.

That isn’t to say he hasn’t lost his maverick charm
altogether. ‘Time To Live’ is a noisy, utterly bonkers potpourri of metal riffs
and trumpets before settling into a more easy-on-the-ears Adam-and-the-Ants
style anthem. ‘Dreamdate Narcissist’ is utter lyrical gibberish with lines like
‘netflix and chill and we pick some dogs’
and ‘protein shake oooh’. And then
there’s acting which see’s Ariel Pink offering digital warbling over smooth-ass
funk. All of these are enough to satiate one’s fix of bizarre. Although not as unapologetically
freakish as he was on Pom Pom, Pink’s
still got a long way to go before he could ever be considered boringly normal.

I don’t understand a word this South Korean chick is
singing, but I’m hooked. Over glossy synth swells and steady punches of
distorted bass, Yaeji’s whispered rap-singing hypnotically pulls you in. The
cool aesthetics in the video help. Not many people can pull off circular-rim
glasses like that.

‘100◦’ – Zoology

Glitchy acoustic pop shouldn’t work. Glitch music is cold
and digital, whilst acoustic music is warm and rustic. Nonetheless this
enigmatic duo make it work – the cracks and fizzles seem to add to the
fragility of the guitars, whilst also adding a dreamlike quality to the singer’s
already gorgeous voice.

‘Rabbit Hole’ – CHMBRS

Halloween is round the corner. Where are all the creepy songs
at? Enter CHMBRS. Set to a dark backdrop of pulsing synths and accompanied by freaky
visuals set in a cage, this Aussie electropop artist’s new anxiety-fuelled song
‘Rabbit Hole’ is satisfyingly unsettling. It also succeeds at being pretty damn
catchy.

‘Waitin’ – Kelela

Kelela has just dropped her debut album Take Me Apart - a gauntlet of futuristic r&b anthems. ‘Waitin’
is the third single from it and sounds like some sci-fi take on UK garage. I’m
even getting Craig David vibes from her breathy inflections.

THE WORST:

‘Pray’ – Sam Smith

Sam Smith squanders his incredible voice yet again with
another soulless soul track that could have been released fifteen years ago.